From Isaac Anumihe, Abuja
The frosty situation that existed between the Association of National Accountants of Nigeria (ANAN) and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (ICAN) has now been put to rest as the two bodies have now reconciled their differences.
This was announced by the 13th president of ANAN, Dr James Ekerare Neminebor at the opening of the 3rd ANAN-Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria (CITN) in Abuja.
According to Neminebor, the two accountancy bodies just realised that the Nigerian economy is too large for only one association to dominate.
” ICAN members are our elder uncles. ICAN came into being in 1965. ANAN came in in 1979. Initially, there was this strange bedfellow behaviour. But today, I must tell you that we are at best because we now know that in the Nigerian situation, the sky is so large for every bird to perch and survive. Just in the United States of America (US), the United Kingdom (UK), and even in South Africa, there are two major accountancy bodies. The Nigerian economy is large enough and everybody has seen it. In fact, in my investiture, on April 29, this year, ICAN was ably represented by their chief executive officer. On the 27th of last month, I was in Lagos for ICAN’s president’s investiture. That’s the relationship that we share now. In fact, the president of ICAN came to visit me here in Abuja. That’s the good relationship we are sharing” he acknowledged.
On the quackery situation in the profession, the president said that the association has developed a database that will make it difficult for anybody to fake its membership.
“Yes, there’s an element of quackery in every profession but in ANAN, we have a fine database which we operate. In fact, as I promised during my investiture, we are arranging a fine digital system so that in every office, with a punch of a button you know that this is an ANAN member. By this, we go round the zones to train them and meet with them. If there’s any doubt we go into the system to prove the membership number of that person” he said.
Speaking on the importance of accountants in government, the president said that for any government to succeed, it must engage the services of accountants.
“Government per se works with statistics, works with data. The reason why we are accountants is that we generate statistics to aid the government’s success. And every government should be able to use accountants to give them data to effectively govern the people. Where data is not sufficiently sent to the government, there would be some miscarriage. Whatever we do, we disclose. The disclosure is the reporting. The reporting is to assist government succeed. Any government who wants to take a major decision should be able to engage the accountants to enable them to give them data to work with” he noted.
Meanwhile, accountants have been accused of aiding and abetting corruption, but discountenancing this notion, Neminebor said that the accountancy profession is guided by a set of rules and ethics and so it is difficult for them to go against the standards.
“That is a very heavy word to use in the public parlance. Everybody in the world is corrupt. The moment there’s a straight way and you branch off from the straight and recognised mode, you are corrupt. An accountant is somebody who has ethics and has rules to follow. Once these rules are followed you know that you are delivering.
“That is why in ANAN we don’t just view your BSc. We don’t just view your HND. But every quarter, after you have gone through the college and we make you a member, you will come back and we train you and tell you the new developments in the profession so that you will not derail in your calling because the moment you derail you have painted the image of the association and you are no more an accountant.
“There are some aberrations here and there. There are some things that may not be correct all the time. But we try to put our members in place to follow modern trends in accounting,” ANAN noted.